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European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

politico.eu

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Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#31

Post by da_big_ghey »

hef19898 wrote: post #14
smarx007 wrote: post #13

No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.

Which is already more than a first step. Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do.

Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Police cannot observe a face for years until they get a warrant then all suddenly have years of data, that is wrong.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#32

Post by rightbyte »

sentinel wrote: post #20
rightbyte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just a matter of time before stores and what not will track you via CCTV and spam you ads and adjust your credit rating depending on some opaque metrics. I rather have a ban on it before it happens.

This is already happening without facial recognition.

By the customer club card/membership? Ye but you don't have to have those.

I don't think banks or Mastercard et al. are allowed to sell customer data in the EU?

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#33

Post by kspacewalk2 »

sentinel wrote: post #7

How did the EU become such a bunch of luddites? Or does it only seem that way from outside? I get that there are legit concerns about face recognition (as there are benefits), but the concerns _could_ be regulated. Granted, regulation is a much more work intensive process – you have to sit down with a large number of people, get educated on the subject etc. Is it laziness? Or is this a negotiation tactic? Start askin…

This is a first step toward regulation. No PRC-style indiscriminate/"predictive" profiling, as a first step. Now let's come up with a way to use this tool to catch actual criminals when investigating actual specific crimes, with judicial oversight that protects our civil liberties without making the tool useless (by creating onerous obstacles to its use, or delaying it unacceptably).

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#34

Post by toss1 »

skywal_l wrote: post #2

The subtitle is also important: Non-binding resolution also asks for AI-based predictive policing ban. AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated.

>>AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated.

True, but I'd add in a touch of Hanlon's Razor — don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to mere incompetence — far too much of the time, the technology is just bad and wrong. It has been over-promised and under-delivered.

It is so often wrong that there are numerous lawsuits, including one today about Uber being sued because the so-called "AI Facial Recognition" system cannot even recognize it's own employees [1]. Great idea to verify everyone automatically, but if the technology sucks, it is worse than nothing.

As if falsely losing your employment is bad enough, the consequences of broad adoption of technology that is not fit for purpose is far worse than merely wasting money and time of law enforcement, courts, etc - it will literally falsely steal people's freedom, while letting actual criminals run loose.

The EU is wise to call a halt to this over-hyped tech.

(And frankly, calling it "AI" is ridiculous — it is just a fancy pattern-match search. This is what the industry gets for over-selling it's new stuff before it is actually ready - and deservedly so. It'd be an entirely different story if they'd fully developed and tested it until it was six+-sigma reliable).

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-ov...

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#35

Post by hef19898 »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #31
hef19898 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is already more than a first step. Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do.

Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Police cannot observe a face for years until they get a warrant then all suddenly have years of data, that is wrong.

Absolutely!

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#36

Post by pjc50 »

bluecalm wrote: post #4

I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police ov…

> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying

This is nothing to do with facial recognition, though. It's a question of how the police allocate their time and effort, and how effective the processes that they work within are.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#37

Post by simion314 »

sentinel wrote: post #20
rightbyte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just a matter of time before stores and what not will track you via CCTV and spam you ads and adjust your credit rating depending on some opaque metrics. I rather have a ban on it before it happens.

This is already happening without facial recognition.

But this can be disrupted, here it is a startup idea but probably Google and Amazon are already working on it

1 offer all shops free surveillance hardware, you will offer them notifications when a suspect enters the shop. You need some PR stuff with big numbers where you claim on how many of your partners/clients are marking suspects that commited theft and how many billions are saved with this AI tech.

2 collect all the videos, do face recognition and connect the people n the image with real identities , infer more personal data from the person facial expression, posture, clothing, stuff they look at

3 profit!

4 collaborate with NSA and FBI to make sure the government will not have an easy job shutting you down.

bonus , you can extend to clubs, schools,parks, bars. You can rent the hardware for private owners with a discount if they mount at least one camera pointed at the street.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#38

Post by nocturnial »

sentinel wrote: post #18
noodlesUK wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognitio…

An argument here is that it disincentivizes others from doing similar crimes. If the technology is so spot on that 99% of the time you commit the crime you'll get caught, then others will likely not take the risk. Granted there's an easy counter argument there (all the more prescient these days) that they could wear a mask while committing the crime. There's a similar (less discussed about) trend happening these days…

> If the technology is so spot on that 99% of the time you commit the crime you'll get caught

And in 1% of the time[1], you are an innocent who had nothing to do with the crime. Now you have to spend your time: getting arrested, spending time with lawyers, getting people to collaborate your alibi (If you want to make a case for facial recognition, criminal justice is one of worst possible cases you could make for it.

[1] I don't accept your claim of 99% accuracy when this is applied on a massive scale. Maybe I'm wrong, so let's go with this number

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#39

Post by toss1 »

bluecalm wrote: post #4

I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police ov…

I totally get that you want to catch the thief that stole your stuff - I get a bit angry hearing about it from here.

But what I really would not want to happen is some poor soul to get collared and have to defend himself because his face (mis-)matched some random street camera.

Despite all the hype about "Artificial Ihtelligence", this technology is nowhere near intelligent, nor even reliable. sure, being able to make a lot of matches sometimes, on white male faces can seem impressive, and perhaps even be genuinely useful in some situations. But the databases on which these 'tools' have been trained are known to be full of garbage (remember "GIGO") and biased, so badly that the results are lawsuits about bad results from the tech. e.g., [1].

The EU is wise to start down the road of banning it, and frankly, this is just desserts for the industry that over-hyped this stuff. We already had one 'AI Winter' because of this, and apparently no one learned the lesson.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-ov...

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#40

Post by ashtonkem »

smarx007 wrote: post #13

No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.

The latter bit is eminently reasonable; there are limits to how much political bodies should be capable of restraining private action, but the rules by which the police discharge their duties is something completely under political control.
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